As the beginning of baseball season approaches, maintaining your field is critical to the success of your team. Maintaining moisture, playability and aesthetics all play a role in the functionality of the field. Here are three quick tips for field maintenance throughout the season.
1. Manage the moisture
Maintaining proper moisture for your infield is extremely important. Infield conditioners lock in moisture while preventing rainouts and relieve compaction and drainage issues. Using an infield conditioner with a greater ability to absorb excess water will help you maintain a playable field. Turface, Pro’s Choice and DuraEdge all carry multiple infield conditioner options with varying features and benefits depending on your field’s needs.
Another way to manage your field’s moisture are drying agents. Turface’s Quick Dry, DuraEdge’s ProDry and Pro’s Choice Rapid Dry drying agents will absorb puddles and standing water on your infield. Just apply it to the wet area and rake it in to remove standing water. These products are engineered to quickly absorb standing water. ProDry also creates the appearance of finely skinned areas without creating a layering effect.
If standing water on your field needs immediate attention, AquaSmart’s Dry Mats are a great addition to your maintenance tool belt. Used for quick clean up and excess water absorption, Dry Mats can absorb up to two gallons of water while eliminating the need to use a drying agent, pump away water or sweep up or mop water.
For more benefits of infield conditioners, this Ewing blog also covers safety, playability and aesthetics.
2. Keep it playable
In order to maintain a playable field surface for the team throughout a long baseball season starts from the ground up.
First, prevent unsafe lips from forming by continuously clearing off the dirt and clay from the turf. You’ll want to stay about two-foot away from the turf line to prevent a lip when you use a drag mat or nail drag when breaking up compacted soils on the infield. Finally, tamp down the turf and infield line to ensure there’s no lip build up.
For additional tips on lip maintenance and infield nail dragging, checkout this Ewing video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R60Jk_aohxA
3. Touch up the paint
Keep your field’s fresh-faced look throughout the season with a fresh coat of paint and chalk. With field marking machines, custom stencils and a variety of paint and chalk options sold at Ewing, your field is sure to stand out.
For areas such as the batter’s box or baselines, you’ll want to dampen the area with water prior to applying paint to help your lines pop. Want to make your pitching rubber, home plate and bases stand out too? Use a can of white aerosol paint to brighten them before or after the game.
When your field’s turf areas are in need of a fresh coat of paint, pay attention to the dilution rate of your paint. When touching up existing lines, you’ll want a higher water to paint ratio for example. Tim Lambert, Ewing’s Sports Fields Specialist, offers up more tips on field painting in this Ewing video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlFxutGrseg&t=35s
Want more tips on baseball field maintenance? Check out these Ewing blogs or stop by your local Ewing store for more information.